Parchment

A quill gold tipped
Plunged into black
Curves and dots and ends
Here ye Here ye
By my degree now I’ll proclaim
Swirls and swirls
The crows cry
Now let me address the poor
But I’m not a king
The parchment ends
Unwrap, unroll
Here ye Here ye
My feathers fall from its perch
I reach to catch
And the abyss fills the desk
How will I talk to the peasants now?
I bite my thumb
And swirl with cherry drops
The king won’t mind
I gave him wit
All will give him praise
A cat hisses form the hall
Now now it makes a pence
Rewrap, reroll
Stamp the seal
With blood and ash
Worry not my peasants
I will save your life
Snip of string
And paper crunch
The owl flutters in protest
Now now go on your way
The wind howls
The city cries
I lean back
I may not be a king
But I’m the one who speaks

PUBLISH YOUR OWN BOOK OF POETRY

Editor’s Note

The number one question our editors receive is—what do the editors and judges look for when judging the contest? The number one answer we give is creativity. Unlike prose, writing composed in everyday language, poetry is considered a creative art and requires a different type of effort and a certain level of depth. Of the thousands of poems entered in each contest, the ones that catch our judges’ eyes are the ones that remove us, even just slightly, from the scope of everyday life by using language that is interesting, specific, vivid, obscure, compelling, figurative, and so on. Oftentimes, poems are pulled aside for a second look based simply on certain words that intrigued the reader. So first and foremost, be sure your poetry is written using creative language. Take general ideas and make them personal. In his infamous book De/Compositions: 101 Good Poems Gone Wrong, W. D. Snodgrass imparts, “We cannot honestly discuss or represent our lives, any more than our poems, without using ideational language.”